Latter-Day Pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle

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The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir ofall the Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of allthe Future, is ever a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comeswith new questions and significance, however commonplace it look: to know _it_, and what it bids us do, is ever the sum ofknowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of Heaven,this also has its heavenly omens;--amid the bustling trivialitiesand loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which if we cannotread and obey, it will not be well with us! No;--nor is thereany sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same,which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: thesin which our old pious fathers called "judicialblindness;"--which we, with our light habits, may still callmisinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its realmeanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupidadherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere currentsemblances of these. This is true of all times and days.

But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools arearrested to ask the meaning of them; few of the generations ofmen have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity,disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded: if they arenot days of endless hope too, then they are days of utterdespair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the ruinbeing clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. Theremust be a new world, if there is to be any world at all! Thathuman things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorryroutine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there;this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days ofuniversal death must be days of universal new-birth, if the ruinis not to be total and final! It is a Time to make the dullestman consider; and ask himself, Whence _he_ came? Whither he isbound?--A veritable "New Era," to the foolish as well as to the wise.

Not long ago, the world saw, with thoughtless joy which mighthave been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not heretoforeconsidered possible or conceivable in the world,--a ReformingPope. A simple pious creature, a good country-priest, investedunexpectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Testament, declaresthat this henceforth shall be his rule of governing. No morefinesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul dealing of anykind: God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice shall be done,on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, orFather of Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne ofSt. Peter; and such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to presidein! The European populations everywhere hailed the omen; withshouting and rejoicing leading articles and tar-barrels; thinkingpeople listened with astonishment,--not with sorrow if they werefaithful or wise; with awe rather as at the heralding of death,and with a joy as of victory beyond death! Something pious,grand and as if awful in that joy, revealing once more thePresence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such men itwas very clear how this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with hisNew Testament in his band. An alarming business, that ofgoverning in the throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity! Bythe rule of veracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter wasopenly declared, above three hundred years, ago, to be a falsity,a huge mistake, a pestilent dead carcass, which this Sun wasweary of. More than three hundred years ago, the throne of St.Peter received peremptory judicial notice to quit; authenticorder, registered in Heaven's chancery and since legible in thehearts of all brave men, to take itself away,--to begone, and letus have no more to do with _it_ and its delusions and impiousdeliriums;--and it has been sitting every day since, it maydepend upon it, at its own peril withal, and will have to payexact damages yet for every day it has so sat. Law of veracity? What this Popedom had to do by the law of veracity, was to giveup its own foul galvanic life, an offence to gods and men;honestly to die, and get itself buried.

Far from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook in regard toit;--and yet, on the whole, it was essentially this too. "Reforming Pope?" said one of our acquaintance, often in thoseweeks, "Was there ever such a miracle? About to break up thathuge imposthume too, by 'curing' it? Turgot and Necker werenothing to this. God is great; and when a scandal is to end,brings some devoted man to take charge of it in hope, not indespair!"--But cannot he reform? asked many simple persons;--towhom our friend in grim banter would reply: "Reform aPopedom,--hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top tobottom, and consisting mainly now of foul _grime_ and _rust_: stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, withtemporary putty, it may hang together yet a while; begin tohammer at it, solder at it, to what you call mend and rectifyit,--it will fall to sherds, as sure as rust is rust; go all intonameless dissolution,--and the fat in the fire will be a thingworth looking at, poor Pope!"--So accordingly it has proved. Thepoor Pope, amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds,went on joyfully for a season: but he had awakened, he as noother man could do, the sleeping elements; mothers of thewhirlwinds, conflagrations, earthquakes. Questions not verysoluble at present, were even sages and heroes set to solve them,began everywhere with new emphasis to be asked. Questions whichall official men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone tillDoomsday. Doomsday itself _had_ come; that was the terribletruth!

For, sure enough, if once the law of veracity be acknowledged asthe rule for human things, there will not anywhere be want ofwork for the reformer; in very few places do human things adherequite closely to that law! Here was the Papa of Christendomproclaiming that such was actually the case;--whereupon all overChristendom such results as we have seen. The Sicilians, Ithink, were the first notable body that set about applying thisnew strange rule sanctioned by the general Father; they said tothemselves, We do not by the law of veracity belong to Naples andthese Neapolitan Officials; we will, by favor of Heaven and thePope, be free of these. Fighting ensued; insurrection, fiercelymaintained in the Sicilian Cities; with much bloodshed, muchtumult and loud noise, vociferation extending through allnewspapers and countries. The effect of this, carried abroad bynewspapers and rumor, was great in all places; greatest perhapsin Paris, which for sixty years past has been the City ofInsurrections. The French People had plumed themselves on being,whatever else they were not, at least the chosen "soldiers ofliberty," who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, atleast; and had become, as their orators, editors and litterateursdiligently taught them, a People whose bayonets were sacred, akind of Messiah People, saving a blind world in its own despite,and earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial gloryvery considerable indeed. And here were the wretcheddown-trodden populations of Sicily risen to rival them, andthreatening to take the trade out of their hand.

No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very Pope's gloryas a Reformer, of the very Sicilians fighting divinely forliberty behind barricades,--must have bitterly aggravated thefeeling of every Frenchman, as he looked around him, at home, ona Louis-Philippism which had become the scorn of all the world. "_Ichabod_; is the glory departing from us? Under the sun isnothing baser, by all accounts and evidences, than the system ofrepression and corruption, of shameless dishonesty and unbeliefin anything but human baseness, that we now live under. TheItalians, the very Pope, have become apostles of liberty, andFrance is--what is France!"--We know what France suddenly becamein the end of February next; and by a clear enough genealogy, wecan trace a considerable share in that event to the good simplePope with the New Testament in his hand. An outbreak, or atleast a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to beachieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable inFrance: but it had been universally expected that France wouldas usual take the initiative in that matter; and had there beenno reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, France hadcertainly not broken out then and so, but only afterwards andotherwise. The French explosion, not anticipated by thecunningest men there on the spot scrutinizing it, burst upunlimited, complete, defying computation or control.

Close following which, as if by sympathetic subterraneanelectricities, all Europe exploded, boundless, uncontrollable;and we had the year 1848, one of the most singular, disastrous,amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European worldever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians hasthere been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rosemonstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bareto dogs and the profane:--Enter, all the world, see what kind ofOfficial holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigning persons,stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole world bellowingin their ear, "Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios notheroes! Off with you, off!" and, what was peculiar and notablein this year for the first time, the Kings all made haste to go,as if exclaiming, "We _are_ poor histrios, we sure enough;--didyou want heroes? Don't kill us; we couldn't help it!" Not oneof them turned round, and stood upon his Kingship, as upon aright he could afford to die for, or to risk his skin upon; by nomanner of means. That, I say, is the alarming peculiarity atpresent. Democracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kingsconscious that they are but Play-actors. The miserable mortals,enacting their High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that thisUniverse may perhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis,--thetruculent Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters: "Scandalous Phantasms, what do _you_ here? Are 'solemnlyconstituted Impostors' the proper Kings of men? Did you thinkthe Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes? To be led alwaysby the squeak of your paltry fiddle? Ye miserable, this Universeis not an upholstery Puppet-play, but a terrible God's Fact; andyou, I think,--had not you better begone!" They fledprecipitately, some of them with what we may call an exquisiteignominy,--in terror of the treadmill or worse. And everywherethe people, or the populace, take their own government uponthemselves; and open "kinglessness," what we call _anarchy_,--howhappy if it be anarchy _plus_ a street-constable!--is everywherethe order of the day. Such was the history, from Baltic toMediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end toend of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Since the destructionof the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Barbarians, Ihave known nothing similar.

And so, then, there remained no King in Europe; no King exceptthe Public Haranguer, haranguing on barrel-head, in leadingarticle; or getting himself aggregated into a National Parliamentto harangue. And for about four months all France, and to agreat degree all Europe, rough-ridden by every species ofdelirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was aweltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine, at theHotel-de-Ville; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman,whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest andheaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of minediscerned to be properly "the first stump-orator in the world,standing too on the highest stump,--for the time." A sorrowfulspectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, thatpoor M. de Lamartine; with nothing in him but melodious wind and_soft sawder_, which he and others took for something divine andnot diabolic! Sad enough; the eloquent latest impersonation ofChaos-come-again; able to talk for itself, and declarepersuasively that it is Cosmos! However, you have but to wait alittle, in such cases; all balloons do and must give up their gasin the pressure of things, and are collapsed in a sufficientlywretched manner before long.

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, andtruculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populaceafter populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds;and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive,much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than everbefore; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, oruniversal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaoticelements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society withall its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the presentepoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal tosuch revolutions--students, young men of letters, advocates,editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justlybankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of themillions and blowing it into flame,--might give rise toreflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now didyoung men, and almost children, take such a command in humanaffairs. A changed time since the word _Senior_ (Seigneur, or_Elder_) was first devised to signify "lord," or superior;--as inall languages of men we find it to have been! Not an honorabledocument this either, as to the spiritual condition of our epoch.In times when men love wisdom, the old man will ever bevenerable, and be venerated, and reckoned noble: in times thatlove something else than wisdom, and indeed have little or nowisdom, and see little or none to love, the old man will cease tobe venerated; and looking more closely, also, you will find thatin fact he has ceased to be venerable, and has begun to becontemptible; a foolish boy still, a boy without the graces,generosities and opulent strength of young boys. In these days,what of _lordship_ or leadership is still to be done, the youthmust do it, not the mature or aged man; the mature man, hardenedinto sceptical egoism, knows no monition but that of his ownfrigid cautious, avarices, mean timidities; and can leadno-whither towards an object that even seems noble. But toreturn.

This mad state of matters will of course before long allayitself, as it has everywhere begun to do; the ordinarynecessities of men's daily existence cannot comport with it, andthese, whatever else is cast aside, will have their way. Someremounting--very temporary remounting--of the old machine, undernew colors and altered forms, will probably ensue soon in mostcountries: the old histrionic Kings will be admitted back underconditions, under "Constitutions," with national Parliaments, orthe like fashionable adjuncts; and everywhere the old daily lifewill try to begin again. But there is now no hope that sucharrangements can be permanent; that they can be other than poortemporary makeshifts, which, if they try to fancy and makethemselves permanent, will be displaced by new explosionsrecurring more speedily than last time. In such balefuloscillation, afloat as amid raging bottomless eddies andconflicting sea-currents, not steadfast as on fixed foundations,must European Society continue swaying, now disastrouslytumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, at ever shorterintervals,--till once the _new_ rock-basis does come to light,and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and of need to mutiny, abateagain!

For universal _Democracy_, whatever we may think of it, hasdeclared itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which welive; and he who has any chance to instruct, or lead, in hisdays, must begin by admitting that: new street-barricades, andnew anarchies, still more scandalous if still less sanguinary,must return and again return, till governing persons everywhereknow and admit that. Democracy, it may be said everywhere, ishere:--for sixty years now, ever since the grand or _First_French Revolution, that fact has been terribly announced to allthe world; in message after message, some of them very terribleindeed; and now at last all the world ought really to believe it. That the world does believe it; that even Kings now as good asbelieve it, and know, or with just terror surmise, that they arebut temporary phantasm Play-actors, and that Democracy is thegrand, alarming, imminent and indisputable Reality: this, amongthe scandalous phases we witnessed in the last two years, is aphasis full of hope: a sign that we are advancing closer andcloser to the very Problem itself, which it will behoove us tosolve or die; that all fighting and campaigning and coalitioningin regard to the _existence_ of the Problem, is hopeless andsuperfluous henceforth. The gods have appointed it so; no Pitt,nor body of Pitts or mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise. Democracy, sure enough, is here; one knows not how long it willkeep hidden underground even in Russia;--and here in England,though we object to it resolutely in the form ofstreet-barricades and insurrectionary pikes, and decidedly willnot open doors to it on those terms, the tramp of its millionfeet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of itsbewildered thousand-fold voice is in all writings and speakings,in all thinkings and modes and activities of men: the soul thatdoes not now, with hope or terror, discern it, is not the one weaddress on this occasion.

What is Democracy; this huge inevitable Product of theDestinies, which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in theselatter days? There lies the question for us. Whence comes it,this universal big black Democracy; whither tends it; what is themeaning of it? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of it, we may, wiselysubmitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still hope tolive in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning, ifwe find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not bepossible!--The whole social wisdom of the Present Time issummoned, in the name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear toitself, and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiantpractice and effort, what the meaning of this universal revolt ofthe European Populations, which calls itself Democracy, anddecides to continue permanent, may be.

Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast followingevent; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there areinterests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men,simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up theirvoices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and proseannouncement, more than plentiful, that _now_ the New Era, andlong-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroicbarricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven! oneof the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in suchcircumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory andpsalmody, from the universal foolish human throat; drowning forthe moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful onethat you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, andmust resignedly bear your part in the same. The front wall ofyour wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you to nopurpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallenprostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will stillhang on by the mere beam-ends, and coherency of old carpentry,though in a sloping direction, and depend there till certain poorrusty nails and worm-eaten dovetailings give way:--but is itcheering, in such circumstances, that the whole household burstforth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation,liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God that nowthey have got a house to their mind? My dear household, ceasesinging and psalmodying; lay aside your fiddles, take out yourwork-implements, if you have any; for I can say with confidencethe laws of gravitation are still active, and rusty nails,worm-eaten dovetailings, and secret coherency of old carpentry,are not the best basis for a household!--In the lanes of Irishcities, I have heard say, the wretched people are sometimes foundliving, and perilously boiling their potatoes, on suchswing-floors and inclined planes hanging on by the joist-ends;but I did not hear that they sang very much in celebration ofsuch lodging. No, they slid gently about, sat near the backwall, and perilously boiled their potatoes, in silence for mostpart!--

High shouts of exultation, in every dialect, by every vehicle ofspeech and writing, rise from far and near over this last avatarof Democracy in 1848: and yet, to wise minds, the first aspect itpresents seems rather to be one of boundless misery and sorrow. What can be more miserable than this universal hunting out of thehigh dignitaries, solemn functionaries, and potent, grave andreverend signiors of the world; this stormful rising-up of theinarticulate dumb masses everywhere, against those who pretendedto be speaking for them and guiding them? These guides, then,were mere blind men only pretending to see? These rulers werenot ruling at all; they had merely got on the attributes andclothes of rulers, and were surreptitiously drawing the wages,while the work remained undone? The Kings were Sham-Kings,play-acting as at Drury Lane;--and what were the people withalthat took them for real?

It is probably the hugest disclosure of _falsity_ in humanthings that was ever at one time made. These reverendDignitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols andlong-sounding long-admitted professions, were mere Impostors,then? Not a true thing they were doing, but a false thing. Thestory they told men was a cunningly devised fable; the gospelsthey preached to them were not an account of man's real positionin this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts andunborn shadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices,--afalsity of falsities, which at last _ceases_ to stick together. Wilfully and against their will, these high units of mankind werecheats, then; and the low millions who believed in them weredupes,--a kind of _inverse_ cheats, too, or they would not havebelieved in them so long. A universal _Bankruptcy ofImposture_; that may be the brief definition of it. Impostureeverywhere declared once more to be contrary to Nature; nobodywill change its word into an act any farther:--fallen insolvent;unable to keep its head up by these false pretences, or make itspot boil any more for the present! A more scandalous phenomenon,wide as Europe, never afflicted the face of the sun. Bankruptcyeverywhere; foul ignominy, and the abomination of desolation, inall high places: odious to look upon, as the carnage of abattle-field on the morrow morning;--a massacre not of theinnocents; we cannot call it a massacre of the innocents; but auniversal tumbling of Impostors and of Impostures into thestreet!--

Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful? There is a joy in it,to the wise man too; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it weresadder than any sorrow,--like the vision of immortality,unattainable except through death and the grave! And yet whowould not, in his heart of hearts, feel piously thankful thatImposture has fallen bankrupt? By all means let it fallbankrupt; in the name of God let it do so, with whatever miseryto itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then,--knownit must and shall be,--is hateful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understand this everywhere; and swiftly make ready fordeparture, wherever it yet lingers; and let it learn never toreturn, if possible! The eternal voices, very audibly again, arespeaking to proclaim this message, from side to side of theworld. Not a very cheering message, but a very indispensableone.

Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here; that we are notpermitted to regret its being here,--for who that had, for thisdivine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish thatShams of any kind, especially that Sham-Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may_cease_. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this tomany a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it doesseem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting hispudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seemsstrange exceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, andbig with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long sincefallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grownceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, allhis life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, thatthere was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spinitself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from theEast and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kingsreigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyerspleaded, bishops preached, and honorable members perorated; andto crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, didnot scrip continue salable, and the banker pay in bullion, orpaper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I have alwaysthought, is he that would destroy shams."

Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of thisepoch, got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and downtowards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quiterecent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly setforth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creaturecalled man believe generally in his heart that lies were the rulein this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying couldthere be help or salvation for him, could there be at lengthother than hindrance and destruction for him. O Heavyside, mysolid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what on earth canbecome of us till this accursed enchantment, the general summaryand consecration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart andlife of one and all! Cast forth it will be; it must, or we aretending, at all moments, whitherward I do not like to name. Alas, and the casting of it out, to what heights and what depthswill it lead us, in the sad universe mostly of lies and shams andhollow phantasms (grown very ghastly now), in which, as in a safehome, we have lived this century or two! To heights and depthsof social and individual _divorce_ from delusions,--of "reform"in right sacred earnest, of indispensable amendment, and sternsorrowful abrogation and order to depart,--such as cannot well bespoken at present; as dare scarcely be thought at present; whichnevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps rather imminentseveral of them! Truly we have a heavy task of work before us;and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin uponit, before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which therewill be no working, but only suffering and hopelesslyperishing!

Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, will itselfmanage it? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnishedwith ballot-boxes and such like, will itself accomplish thesalutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make a newblessed world of us by and by?--To the great mass of men, I amaware, the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side. Democracy they consider to _be_ a kind of "Government." The oldmodel, formed long since, and brought to perfection in Englandnow two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nationsas the new healing for every woe: "Set up a Parliament," theNations everywhere say, when the old King is detected to be aSham-King, and hunted out or not; "set up a Parliament; let ushave suffrages, universal suffrages; and all either at once or bydue degrees will be right, and a real Millennium come!" Such istheir way of construing the matter.

Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the matter; if itwere, I should have had the happiness of remaining silent, andbeen without call to speak here. It is because the contrary ofall this is deeply manifest to me, and appears to be forgotten bymultitudes of my contemporaries, that I have had to undertakeaddressing a word to them. The contrary of all this;--and thefarther I look into the roots of all this, the more hateful,ruinous and dismal does the state of mind all this could haveoriginated in appear to me. To examine this recipe of aParliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay how fit itmay now be, in these new times, for governing England itselfwhere we are used to it so long: this, too, is an alarminginquiry, to which all thinking men, and good citizens of theircountry, who have an ear for the small still voices and eternalintimations, across the temporary clamors and loud blaringproclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorousfact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demandpractical decision or redecision of it from us,--with enormouspenalty if we decide it wrong! I think we shall all have toconsider this question, one day; better perhaps now than later,when the leisure may be less. If a Parliament, with suffragesand universal or any conceivable kind of suffrages, is themethod, then certainly let us set about discovering the kind ofsuffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. But it ispossible a Parliament may not be the method! Possible theinveterate notions of the English People may have settled it asthe method, and the Everlasting Laws of Nature may have settledit as not the method! Not the whole method; nor the method atall, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never suchsuffrages is not the method settled by this latter authority,then it will urgently behoove us to become aware of that fact,and to quit such method;--we may depend upon it, howeverunanimous we be, every step taken in that direction will, by theEternal Law of things, be a step _from_ improvement, not towards it.

Not towards it, I say, if so! Unanimity of voting,--that will donothing for us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by itsexcellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that,above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitelyconstitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, willfind a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed withadamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who areentirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or withoutvoting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform tothem, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffianWinds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs,dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with mostchaotic "admonition;" you will be flung half frozen on thePatagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your icebergcouncillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will neverget round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship;--yes indeed,the ship's crew may be very unanimous, which doubtless, for thetime being, will be very comfortable to the ship's crew, and totheir Phantasm Captain if they have one: but if the tack theyunanimously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of theAbyss, it will not profit them much!--Ships accordingly do notuse the ballot-box at all; and they reject the Phantasm speciesof Captains: one wishes much some other Entities--since allentities lie under the same rigorous set of laws--could bebrought to show as much wisdom, and sense at least ofself-preservation, the first command of Nature. PhantasmCaptains with unanimous votings: this is considered to be allthe law and all the prophets, at present.

If a man could shake out of his mind the universal noise ofpolitical doctors in this generation and in the last generationor two, and consider the matter face to face, with his ownsincere intelligence looking at it, I venture to say he wouldfind this a very extraordinary method of navigating, whether inthe Straits of Magellan or the undiscovered Sea of Time. Toprosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement,either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite,That the man or nation can discern what the true regulations ofthe Universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, and canfaithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him tovictory; whoever it may be that sets him in the way ofthese,--were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, GrandLama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudythe Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of PoliticalEconomy,--sets him in the sure way to please the Author of thisUniverse, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever doesthe contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. Thismay be taken as fixed.

And now by what method ascertain the monition of the gods inregard to our affairs? How decipher, with best fidelity, theeternal regulation of the Universe; and read, from amid suchconfused embroilments of human clamor and folly, what the realDivine Message to us is? A divine message, or eternal regulationof the Universe, there verily is, in regard to every conceivableprocedure and affair of man: faithfully following this, saidprocedure or affair will prosper, and have the whole Universe tosecond it, and carry it, across the fluctuating contradictions,towards a victorious goal; not following this, mistaking this,disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain for everyaffair. How find it? All the world answers me, "Count heads;ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell." Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,--Iperceive we have got into strange spiritual latitudes indeed.Within the last half-century or so, either the Universe or elsethe heads of men must have altered very much. Half a centuryago, and down from Father Adam's time till then, the Universe,wherever I could hear tell of it, was wont to be of somewhatabstruse nature; by no means carrying its secret written on itsface, legible to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinatelyhiding its secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincerepersons, and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-mindedalone, whose number was not the majority in my time!

Or perhaps the chief end of man being now, in these improvedepochs, to make money and spend it, his interests in the Universehave become amazingly simplified of late; capable of being votedon with effect by almost anybody? "To buy in the cheapestmarket, and sell in the dearest:" truly if that is the summary ofhis social duties, and the final divine message he has to follow,we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is not,and never was, or can be? If the Universe will not carry on itsdivine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no higheraim,--being still "a Temple and Hall of Doom," not a mereWeaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universe hasdecided to _reject_ Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and willabolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their"markets" and them, unless they think of it?--In that case itwere better to think of it: and the Democracies and UniversalSuffrages, I can observe, will require to modify themselves agood deal!

Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation that couldsubsist upon Democracy. Of ancient Republics, and _Demoi_ and_Populi_, we have heard much; but it is now pretty well admittedto be nothing to our purpose;--a universal-suffrage republic, ora general-suffrage one, or any but a most-limited-suffrage one,never came to light, or dreamed of doing so, in ancient times. When the mass of the population were slaves, and the votersintrinsically a kind of _kings_, or men born to rule others; whenthe voters were real "aristocrats" and manageable dependents ofsuch,--then doubtless voting, and confused jumbling of talk andintrigue, might, without immediate destruction, or the need of aCavaignac to intervene with cannon and sweep the streets clear ofit, go on; and beautiful developments of manhood might bepossible beside it, for a season. Beside it; or even, if youwill, by means of it, and in virtue of it, though that is by nomeans so certain as is often supposed. Alas, no: the reflectiveconstitutional mind has misgivings as to the origin of old Greekand Roman nobleness; and indeed knows not how this or any otherhuman nobleness could well be "originated," or brought to pass,by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the graceof God very mainly;--and remembers, with a sigh, that of theSeven Sages themselves no fewer than three were bits of DespoticKings, [Gr.] _Turannoi_, "Tyrants" so called (such being greatlywanted there); and that the other four were very far from RedRepublicans, if of any political faith whatever! We may quit theAncient Classical concern, and leave it to College-clubs andspeculative debating-societies, in these late days.

Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or that arestill on trial,--of these also it is not needful to say any word. But there is one modern instance of Democracy nearly perfect, theRepublic of the United States, which has actually subsisted forthreescore years or more, with immense success as is affirmed; towhich many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations,and a "Model Republic." Is not America an instance in point? Why should not all Nations subsist and flourish on Democracy, asAmerica does?

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps aslittle as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically,if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, andin many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough,these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthyof their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, ifnot yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantlyclearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance andrefuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world;doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheeringfeat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a modelanything, the wise among themselves know too well that there isnothing to be said. Nay the title hitherto to be a Commonwealthor Nation at all, among the [Gr.] _ethne_ of the world, is,strictly considered, still a thing they are but striving for, andindeed have not yet done much towards attaining. TheirConstitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there; wentover with them from the Old-Puritan English workshop ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from Englandready-made,--their common English Language, and that sameConstitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterateand now, as it were, inborn reverence for the Constable's Staff;two quite immense attainments, which England had to spend muchblood, and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long,in achieving;--and what new elements of polity or nationhood,what noble new phasis of human arrangement, or social deviceworthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light inAmerica? Cotton crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light;and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respectthe constable can live, for the present _without_ Government: this comes to light; and the profound sorrow of all noblerhearts, here uttering itself as silent patient unspeakable ennui,there coming out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is stillnext to nothing more. "Anarchy _plus_ a street-constable:" thatalso is anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely!

I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are full, thevery street-constable, on these poor terms, will have becomeimpossible: without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I donot see how he could continue possible many weeks. Cease to bragto me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusingand ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic ancestors,saying, "It is well, it is well!" Corn and bacon are granted:not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreoverwhich, on such conditions, cannot last!--No: America too willhave to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this; tocrack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of ushave had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons andmud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods. America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful thoughnothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New SpiritualPythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as wereever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilightFuture on America; and she will have her own agony, and her ownvictory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very successfulmanner; hitherto, in spite of her "roast-goose with apple-sauce,"she is not much. "Roast-goose with apple-sauce for the poorestworkingman:" well, surely that is something, thanks to yourrespect for the street-constable, and to your continents offertile waste land;--but that, even if it could continue, is byno means enough; that is not even an instalment towards what willbe required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our Americancousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry andresources, I believe to be almost unspeakable; but I can by nomeans worship the like of these. What great human soul, whatgreat thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, orloyally admire, has yet been produced there? None: the Americancousins have yet done none of these things. "What they havedone?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject: "They havedoubled their population every twenty years. They havebegotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example, EighteenMillions of the greatest _bores_ ever seen in this worldbefore,--that hitherto is their feat in History!"--And so weleave them, for the present; and cannot predict the success ofDemocracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from theirexample.

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, weapprehend, is forever impossible! So much, with certainty ofloud astonished contradiction from all manner of men at present,but with sure appeal to the Law of Nature and the ever-abidingFact, may be suggested and asserted once more. The Universeitself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy; large liberty of "voting"there, all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but withconditions inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every exerciseof the same. A most free commonwealth of "voters;" but withEternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced byAlmighty Power! This is the model of "constitutions;" this: norin any Nation where there has not yet (in some supportable andwithal some constantly increasing degree) been confided to the_Noblest_, with his select series of _Nobler_, the divineeverlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble, hasthe "Kingdom of God," which we all pray for, "come," nor can "Hiswill" even _tend_ to be "done on Earth as it is in Heaven" tillthen. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christian andAnti-Christian, and all manner of men, are invited to reflect onthis. They will find it to be the truth of the case. The Noblein the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all timesand in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.

To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him bywhatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from oldwont, this, little as we may regard it, is, in all times andcountries, a practical blasphemy, and Nature will in nowiseforget it. Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, ofmodern Democracy everywhere. It is the Noblest, not theSham-Noblest; it is God-Almighty's Noble, not the Court-Tailor'sNoble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must, in someapproximate degree, be raised to the supreme place; he and not acounterfeit,--under penalties! Penalties deep as death, and atlength terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend!--Willthe ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does anysane man deliberately believe such a thing? That nevertheless isthe indispensable result, attain it how we may: if that isattained, all is attained; if not that, nothing. He that cannotbelieve the ballot-box to be attaining it, will be comparativelyindifferent to the ballot-box. Excellent for keeping the ship'screw at peace under their Phantasm Captain; but unserviceable,under such, for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, that there shouldbe human beings requiring to have these things argued of, at thislate time of day!

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to begoverned by the wise; to be guided in the right path by those whoknow it better than they. This is the first "right of man;"compared with which all other rights are as nothing,--meresuperfluities, corollaries which will follow of their own accordout of this; if they be not contradictions to this, and less thannothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; far other indeed. Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it impliespreservation of themselves withal; but intrinsically it is theharshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to hishand. A duty which he would fain enough shirk; whichaccordingly, in these sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, hehas long everywhere been endeavoring to reduce to its minimum,and has in fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. It isan ungoverned world; a world which we flatter ourselves willhenceforth need no governing. On the dust of our heroicancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It iswell, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, wehave been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil , notby shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this EnglishExistence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable fieldfor us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous cropsforever,--find it now in a too questionable state; peremptorilyrequiring real labor and agriculture again. Real "agriculture"is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (withballot-box or otherwise) than to plough!

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He thatis fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unlessconstrained. By multifarious devices we have been endeavoring todispense with governing; and by very superficial speculations, of_laissez-faire_, supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade ourselvesthat it is best so. The Real Captain, unless it be some Captainof mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, where is he in thesedays? Most likely, in silence, in sad isolation somewhere, inremote obscurity; trying if, in an evil ungoverned time, hecannot at least govern himself. The Real Captain undiscoverable;the Phantasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous:--it is thoughtPhantasm Captains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the true method,after all. They are much the pleasantest for the time being! And so no _Dux_ or Duke of any sort, in any province of ouraffairs, now _leads_: the Duke's Bailiff _leads_, what littleleading is required for getting in the rents; and the Duke merelyrides in the state-coach. It is everywhere so: and now at lastwe see a world all rushing towards strange consummations, becauseit is and has long been so!

I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in Englandat all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and theRevolutionary Millenniums preached by the French Prophets in thisage: but there are many movements here too which tend inevitablyin the like direction; and good men, who would stand aghast atRed Republic and its adjuncts, seem to me travelling at fullspeed towards that or a similar goal! Certainly the notioneverywhere prevails among us too, and preaches itself abroad inevery dialect, uncontradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, Thatthe grand panacea for social woes is what we call"enfranchisement," "emancipation;" or, translated into practicallanguage, the cutting asunder of human relations, wherever theyare found grievous, as is like to be pretty universally the caseat the rate we have been going for some generations past. Let usall be "free" of one another; we shall then be happy. Free,without bond or connection except that of cash-payment; fairday's wages for the fair day's work; bargained for by voluntarycontract, and law of supply-and-demand: this is thought to bethe true solution of all difficulties and injustices that haveoccurred between man and man.

To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there nomethod, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has becomeunsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; it imperatively requires tobe amended; and the remedy is, Abolish it, let there henceforthbe no relation at all. From the "Sacrament of Marriage"downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly related, one toanother, and each to all; and there was no relation among humanbeings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances anddifficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that, by favorof Heaven: "the voluntary principle" has come up, which willitself do the business for us; and now let a new Sacrament, thatof Divorce, which we call emancipation, and spout of on ourplatforms, be universally the order of the day!--Have menconsidered whither all this is tending, and what it certainlyenough betokens? Cut every human relation which has anywheregrown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory tovoluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition ofnomadic:--in other words, loosen by assiduous wedges in everyjoint, the whole fabric of social existence, stone from stone: till at last, all now being loose enough, it can, as we alreadysee in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst ofrevolutionary rage; and, lying as mere mountains of anarchicrubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c., over it, and torejoice in the new remarkable era of human progress we havearrived at.

Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, thisgood while; and has got to such a length as might give rise toreflections in men of a serious turn. West-Indian Blacks areemancipated, and it appears refuse to work: Irish Whites havelong been entirely emancipated; and nobody asks them to work, oron condition of finding them potatoes (which, of course, isindispensable), permits them to work.--Among speculative persons,a question has sometimes risen: In the progress of Emancipation,are we to look for a time when all the Horses also are to beemancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demand principle? Horses too have "motives;" are acted on by hunger, fear, hope,love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity,ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rudeoutline of all our human spiritualities,--a rude resemblance tous in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-footed fellow, he too has his privatefeelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; nohuman master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, orrecklessly lay on the whip where it is not needed:--I am sure ifI could make him "happy," I should be willing to grant a smallvote (in addition to the late twenty millions) for thatobject!

Him too you occasionally tyrannize over; and with bad result toyourselves, among others; using the leather in a tyrannousunnecessary manner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oatsand ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, onefears they are a little tyrannous at times. "Am I not a horse,and half-brother?"--To remedy which, so far as remediable,fancy--the horses all "emancipated;" restored to their primevalright of property in the grass of this Globe: turned out tograze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So long asgrass lasts, I dare say they are very happy, or think themselvesso. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning,with a sieve of oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectationin his heart, is he happy? Help me to plough this day, BlackDobbin: oats in full measure if thou wilt. "Hlunh, No--thank!"snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? "Hlunh!"--Gray Joan, then, mybeautiful broad-bottomed mare,--O Heaven, she too answers Hlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-cropsare _ended_ in this world!--For the sake, if not of Hodge, thenof Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might nowcease, and a new and better one try to begin. Small kindness toHodge's horses to emancipate them! The fate of all emancipatedhorses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in thishabitable Earth no grass to eat,--in Black Jamaica graduallynone, as in White Connemara already none;--to roam aimless,wasting the seedfields of the world; and be hunted home to Chaos,by the due watch-dogs and due hell-dogs, with such horrors offorsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These thingsare not sport; they are terribly true, in this country at thishour.

Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, betweenthese two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishinginability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, withour fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, andidle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary Principle, Time willmend it:--till British industrial existence seems fast becomingone huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral; ahideous _living_ Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; sucha Curtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sunnever saw till now. These scenes, which the _Morning Chronicle_is bringing home to all minds of men,--thanks to it for a servicesuch as Newspapers have seldom done,--ought to excite unspeakablereflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomenworking themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupersrotting in forced idleness, _helping_ said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.

Thirty thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrefying well ofabominations; they have oozed in upon London, from the universalStygian quagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated inthe _well_ of the concern, to that extent. British charity issmitten to the heart, at the laying bare of such a scene;passionately undertakes, by enormous subscription of money, or byother enormous effort, to redress that individual horror; as Iand all men hope it may. But, alas, what next? This general welland cesspool once baled clean out to-day, will begin before nightto fill itself anew. The universal Stygian quagmire is stillthere; opulent in women ready to be ruined, and in men ready. Towards the same sad cesspool will these waste currents of humanruin ooze and gravitate as heretofore; except in draining theuniversal quagmire itself there is no remedy. "And for that,what is the method?" cry many in an angry manner. To whom, forthe present, I answer only, "Not 'emancipation,' it would seem,my friends; not the cutting loose of human ties, something farthe reverse of that!"

Many things have been written about shirtmaking; but here perhapsis the saddest thing of all, not written anywhere till now, thatI know of. Shirts by the thirty thousand are made attwopence-halfpenny each; and in the mean while no needlewoman,distressed or other, can be procured in London by any housewifeto give, for fair wages, fair help in sewing. Ask any thriftyhouse-mother, high or low, and she will answer. In high housesand in low, there is the same answer: no _real_ needlewoman,"distressed" or other, has been found attainable in any of thehouses I frequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who demand considerablewages, and have a deepish appetite for beer and viands, I hear ofeverywhere; but their sewing proves too often a distractedpuckering and botching; not sewing, only the fallacious hope ofit, a fond imagination of the mind. Good sempstresses are to behired in every village; and in London, with its famishing thirtythousand, not at all, or hardly,--Is not No-government beautifulin human business? To such length has the Leave-alone principlecarried it, by way of organizing labor, in this affair ofshirtmaking. Let us hope the Leave-alone principle has now gotits apotheosis; and taken wing towards higher regions than ours,to deal henceforth with a class of affairs more appropriate forit!

Reader, did you ever hear of "Constituted Anarchy"? Anarchy; thechoking, sweltering, deadly and killing rule of No-rule; theconsecration of cupidity, and braying folly, and dim stupidityand baseness, in most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirtsattainable three halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bodiesand immortal souls? Solemn Bishops and high Dignitaries, _our_divine "Pillars of Fire by night," debating meanwhile, with theirlargest wigs and gravest look, upon something they call"prevenient grace"? Alas, our noble men of genius, Heaven's_real_ messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by thewasteful time;--preappointed they everywhere, and assiduouslytrained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise inParliament," to compose orations, write books, or in short speakwords, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing realkingly work to be approved of by the gods! Our "Government," ahighly "responsible" one; responsible to no God that I can hearof, but to the twenty-seven million _gods_ of the shillinggallery. A Government tumbling and drifting on the whirlpoolsand mud-deluges, floating atop in a conspicuous manner,no-whither,--like the carcass of a drowned ass. Authentic_Chaos_ come up into this sunny Cosmos again; and all men singingGloria in _excelsis_ to it. In spirituals and temporals, infield and workshop, from Manchester to Dorsetshire, from LambethPalace to the Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meet and toiland traffic together,--Anarchy, Anarchy; and only thestreet-constable (though with ever-increasing difficulty) stillmaintaining himself in the middle of it; that so, for one thing,this blessed exchange of slop-shirts for the souls of women maytransact itself in a peaceable manner!--I, for my part, doprofess myself in eternal opposition to this, and discern wellthat universal Ruin has us in the wind, unless we can get out ofthis. My friend Crabbe, in a late number of his _IntermittentRadiator_, pertinently enough exclaims:--

"When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty,Voluntary Principle, Dangers of Centralization, and the like? Itis really getting too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, thepeople cannot be taught to read. British Liberty, shuddering tointerfere with the rights of capital, takes six or eight millionsof money annually to feed the idle laborer whom it dare notemploy. For British Liberty we live over poisonous cesspools,gully-drains, and detestable abominations; and omnipotent Londoncannot sweep the dirt out of itself. British Libertyproduces--what? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, andapparently little else at present. If these are the results ofBritish Liberty, I, for one, move we should lay it on the shelf alittle, and look out for something other and farther. We haveachieved British Liberty hundreds of years ago; and are fastgrowing, on the strength of it, one of the most absurdpopulations the Sun, among his great Museum of Absurdities, looksdown upon at present."

Curious enough: the model of the world just now is England andher Constitution; all Nations striving towards it: poor Franceswimming these last sixty years in seas of horrid dissolution andconfusion, resolute to attain this blessedness of free voting, orto die in chase of it. Prussia too, solid Germany itself, hasall broken out into crackling of musketry, loud pamphleteeringand Frankfort parliamenting and palavering; Germany too willscale the sacred mountains, how steep soever, and, by talisman ofballot-box, inhabit a political Elysium henceforth. All theNations have that one hope. Very notable, and rather sad to thehumane on-looker. For it is sadly conjectured, all the Nationslabor somewhat under a mistake as to England, and the causes ofher freedom and her prosperous cotton-spinning; and have muchmisread the nature of her Parliament, and the effect ofballot-boxes and universal suffrages there.

What if it were because the English Parliament was from thefirst, and is only just now ceasing to be, a Council of actualRulers, real Governing Persons (called Peers, Mitred Abbots,Lords, Knights of the Shire, or howsoever called), actually_ruling_ each his section of the country,--and possessing (itmust be said) in the lump, or when assembled as a Council,uncommon patience, devoutness, probity, discretion and goodfortune,--that the said Parliament ever came to be good formuch? In that case it will not be easy to "imitate" the EnglishParliament; and the ballot-box and suffrage will be the mere bowof Robin Hood, which it is given to very few to bend, or shootwith to any perfection. And if the Peers become mere bigCapitalists, Railway Directors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings ofScrip, _without_ lordly quality, or other virtue except cash; andthe Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors, masters ofParliamentary Eloquence, Doctors of Political Economy, and suchlike; and all _have_ to be elected by a universal-suffrageballot-box,--I do not see how the English Parliament itself willlong continue sea-worthy! Nay, I find England in her own bigdumb heart, wherever you come upon her in a silent meditativehour, begins to have dreadful misgivings about it.

The model of the world, then, is at once unattainable by theworld, and not much worth attaining? England, as I read theomens, is now called a second time to "show the Nations how tolive;" for by her Parliament, as chief governing entity, I fearshe is not long for this world! Poor England must herself again,in these new strange times, the old methods being quite worn out,"learn how to live." That now is the terrible problem forEngland, as for all the Nations; and she alone of all, not _yet_sunk into open Anarchy, but left with time for repentance andamendment; she, wealthiest of all in material resource, inspiritual energy, in ancient loyalty to law, and in the qualitiesthat yield such loyalty,--she perhaps alone of all may be able,with huge travail, and the strain of all her faculties, toaccomplish some solution. She will have to try it, she has nowto try it; she must accomplish it, or perish from her place inthe world!

England, as I persuade myself, still contains in it many_kings_; possesses, as old Rome did, many men not needing"election" to command, but eternally elected for it by the MakerHimself. England's one hope is in these, just now. They areamong the silent, I believe; mostly far away from platforms andpublic palaverings; not speaking forth the image of theirnobleness in transitory words, but imprinting it, each on his ownlittle section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiantactions, that will endure forevermore. They must sit silent nolonger. They are summoned to assert themselves; to act forth,and articulately vindicate, in the teeth of howling multitudes,of a world too justly _maddened_ into all manner of deliriousclamors, what of wisdom they derive from God. England, and theEternal Voices, summon them; poor England never so needed them asnow. Up, be doing everywhere: the hour of crisis has verilycome! In all sections of English life, the god-made _king_ isneeded; is pressingly demanded in most; in some, cannot longer,without peril as of conflagration, be dispensed with. He,wheresoever he finds himself, can say, "Here too am I wanted;here is the kingdom I have to subjugate, and introduce God's Lawsinto,--God's Laws, instead of Mammon's and M'Croudy's and the OldAnarch's! Here is my work, here or nowhere."--Are there manysuch, who will answer to the call, in England? It turns on that,whether England, rapidly crumbling in these very years andmonths, shall go down to the Abyss as her neighbors have alldone, or survive to new grander destinies _without_ solution ofcontinuity! Probably the chief question of the world atpresent.

The true "commander" and king; he who knows for himself thedivine Appointments of this Universe, the Eternal Laws ordainedby God the Maker, in conforming to which lies victory andfelicity, in departing from which lies, and forever must lie,sorrow and defeat, for each and all of the Posterity of Adam inevery time and every place; he who has sworn fealty to these, anddare alone against the world assert these, and dare not with thewhole world at his back deflect from these;--he, I know too well,is a rare man. Difficult to discover; not quite discoverable, Iapprehend, by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and riddling of thepopular clamor according to the most approved methods. He is notsold at any shop I know of,--though sometimes, as at the sign ofthe Ballot-box, he is advertised for sale. Difficult indeed todiscover: and not very much assisted, or encouraged in latetimes, to discover _himself_;--which, I think, might be a kind ofhelp? Encouraged rather, and commanded in all ways, if he bewise, to _hide_ himself, and give place to the windy Counterfeitof himself; such as the universal suffrages can recognize, suchas loves the most sweet voices of the universal suffrages!--OPeter, what becomes of such a People; what can become?

Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that fatefulHebrew Prophecy, I think the fatefulest of all, which soundsdaily through the streets, "Ou' clo! Ou' clo!"--A certainPeople, once upon a time, clamorously voted by overwhelmingmajority, "Not _he_; Barabbas, not he! _Him_, and what he is, andwhat be deserves, we know well enough: a reviler of the ChiefPriests and sacred Chancery wigs; a seditious Heretic,physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind: To the gallows and the cross with him! Barabbas is our man;Barabbas, we are for Barabbas!" They got Barabbas:--have youwell considered what a fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque_flunkyism_ grown truculent and transcendent; what an eye for thephylacteries, and want of eye for the eternal noblenesses; sordidloyalty to the prosperous Semblances, and high-treason againstthe Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens in these natures? For itwas the consummation of a long series of such; they and theirfathers had long kept voting so. A singular People; who couldboth produce such divine men, and then could so stone and crucifythem; a People terrible from the beginning!--Well, they gotBarabbas; and they got, of course, such guidance as Barabbas andthe like of him could give them; and, of course, they stumbledever downwards and devilwards, in their truculent stiffneckedway; and--and, at this hour, after eighteen centuries of sadfortune, they prophetically sing "Ou' clo!" in all the cities ofthe world. Might the world, at this late hour, but take note ofthem, and understand their song a little!

Yes, there are some things the universal suffrage candecide,--and about these it will be exceedingly useful to consultthe universal suffrage: but in regard to most things ofimportance, and in regard to the choice of men especially, thereis (astonishing as it may seem) next to no capability on the partof universal suffrage.--I request all candid persons, who havenever so little originality of mind, and every man has a little,to consider this. If true, it involves such a change in our nowfashionable modes of procedure as fills me with astonishment andalarm. _If_ popular suffrage is not the way of ascertaining whatthe Laws of the Universe are, and who it is that will best guideus in the way of these,--then woe is to us if we do not takeanother method. Delolme on the British Constitution will notsave us; deaf will the Parcae be to votes of the House, toleading articles, constitutional philosophies. The othermethod--alas, it involves a stopping short, or vital change ofdirection, in the glorious career which all Europe, with shoutsheaven-high, is now galloping along: and that, happen when itmay, will, to many of us, be probably a rather surprisingbusiness!

One thing I do know, and can again assert with great confidence,supported by the whole Universe, and by some two hundredgenerations of men, who have left us some record of themselvesthere, That the few Wise will have, by one method or another, totake command of the innumerable Foolish; that they must be got totake it;--and that, in fact, since Wisdom, which means also Valorand heroic Nobleness, is alone strong in this world, and one wiseman is stronger than all men unwise, they can be got. That theymust take it; and having taken, must keep it, and do their God'sMessage in it, and defend the same, at their life's peril,against all men and devils. This I do clearly believe to be thebackbone of all Future Society, as it has been of all Past; andthat without it, there is no Society possible in the world. Andwhat a business _this_ will be, before it end in some degree ofvictory again, and whether the time for shouts of triumph andtremendous cheers upon it is yet come, or not yet by a great way,I perceive too well! A business to make us all very seriousindeed. A business not to be accomplished but by noble manhood,and devout all-daring, all-enduring loyalty to Heaven, such asfatally _sleeps_ at present,--such as is not _dead_ at presenteither, unless the gods have doomed this world of theirs to die! A business which long centuries of faithful travail and heroicagony, on the part of all the noble that are born to us, will notend; and which to us, of this "tremendous cheering" century, itwere blessedness very great to see successfully begun. Begun,tried by all manner of methods, if there is one wise Statesman orman left among us, it verily must be;--begun, successfully orunsuccessfully, we do hope to see it!

In all European countries, especially in England, one class ofCaptains and commanders of men, recognizable as the beginning ofa new real and not imaginary "Aristocracy," has already in somemeasure developed itself: the Captains of Industry;--happily theclass who above all, or at least first of all, are wanted in thistime. In the doing of material work, we have already men amongus that can command bodies of men. And surely, on the otherhand, there is no lack of men needing to be commanded: the sadclass of brother-men whom we had to describe as "Hodge'semancipated horses," reduced to roving famine,--this too has inall countries developed itself; and, in fatal geometricalprogression, is ever more developing itself, with a rapiditywhich alarms every one. On this ground, if not on all manner ofother grounds, it may be truly said, the "Organization of Labor"(_not_ organizable by the mad methods tried hitherto) is theuniversal vital Problem of the world.

To bring these hordes of outcast captainless soldiers under duecaptaincy? This is really the question of questions; on theanswer to which turns, among other things, the fate of allGovernments, constitutional and other,--the possibility of theircontinuing to exist, or the impossibility. Captainless,uncommanded, these wretched outcast "soldiers," since theycannot starve, must needs become banditti,street-barricaders,--destroyers of every Government that _cannot_put them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and inshort render life human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws,which we once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidentlyfast breaking down. Ireland, now admitted into the IdleWorkhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces. That never was a"human" destiny for any honest son of Adam; nowhere but inEngland could it have lasted at all; and now, with Ireland sharerin it, and the fulness of time come, it is as good as ended. Alas, yes. Here in Connemara, your crazy Ship of the State,otherwise dreadfully rotten in many of its timbers I believe, hassprung a leak: spite of all hands at the pump, the water isrising; the Ship, I perceive, will founder, if you cannot stopthis leak!

To bring these Captainless under due captaincy? The anxiousthoughts of all men that do think are turned upon that question;and their efforts, though as yet blindly and to no purpose, underthe multifarious impediments and obscurations, all pointthitherward. Isolated men, and their vague efforts, cannot doit. Government everywhere is called upon,--in England as loudlyas elsewhere,--to give the initiative. A new strange task ofthese new epochs; which no Government, never so"constitutional," can escape from undertaking. For it is vitallynecessary to the existence of Society itself; it must beundertaken, and succeeded in too, or worse will follow,--and, aswe already see in Irish Connaught and some other places, willfollow soon. To whatever thing still calls itself by the name ofGovernment, were it never so constitutional and impeded byofficial impossibilities, all men will naturally look for help,and direction what to do, in this extremity. If help ordirection is not given; if the thing called Government merelydrift and tumble to and fro, no-whither, on the popular vortexes,like some carcass of a drowned ass, constitutionally put "at thetop of affairs," popular indignation will infallibly accumulateupon it; one day, the popular lightning, descending forked andhorrible from the black air, will annihilate said supremecarcass, and smite it home to its native ooze again!--YourLordship, this is too true, though irreverently spoken: indeedone knows not how to speak of it; and to me it is infinitely sadand miserable, spoken or not!--Unless perhaps the VoluntaryPrinciple will still help us through? Perhaps this Irish leak,in such a rotten distressed condition of the Ship, with all thecrew so anxious about it, will be kind enough to stop ofitself?--

Dismiss that hope, your Lordship! Let all real and imaginaryGovernors of England, at the pass we have arrived at, dismissforever that fallacious fatal solace to their do-nothingism: ofitself, too clearly, the leak will never stop; by human skill andenergy it must be stopped, or there is nothing but the sea-bottomfor us all! A Chief Governor of England really ought torecognize his situation; to discern that, doing nothing, andmerely drifting to and fro, in however constitutional a manner,he is a squanderer of precious moments, moments that perhaps arepriceless; a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, to a ChiefGovernor of England, worthy of that high name,--surely to him, asto every living man, in every conceivable situation short of theKingdom of the Dead--there is _something_ possible; some plan ofaction other than that of standing mildly, with crossed arms,till he and we--sink? Complex as his situation is, he, of allGovernors now extant among these distracted Nations, has, as Icompute, by far the greatest possibilities. The Captains, actualor potential, are there, and the million Captainless: and suchresources for bringing them together as no other has. To theseoutcast soldiers of his, unregimented roving banditti for thepresent, or unworking workhouse prisoners who are almost uglierthan banditti; to these floods of Irish Beggars, Able-bodiedPaupers, and nomadic Lackalls, now stagnating or roamingeverywhere, drowning the face of the world (too truly) into anuntenantable swamp and Stygian quagmire, has the Chief Governorof this country no word whatever to say? Nothing but "Rate inaid," "Time will mend it," "Necessary business of the Session;"and "After me the Deluge"? A Chief Governor that can front hisIrish difficulty, and steadily contemplate the horoscope of Irishand British Pauperism, and whitherward it is leading him and us,in this humor, must be a--What shall we call such a ChiefGovernor? Alas, in spite of old use and wont,--little other thana tolerated Solecism, growing daily more intolerable! Hedecidedly ought to have some word to say on this matter,--to beincessantly occupied in getting something which he couldpractically say!--Perhaps to the following, or a much finereffect?

_Speech of the British Prime-Minister to the floods of Irish andother Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary,and the general assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the PauperPopulations of these Realms_.

"Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you, criminal many of you,miserable all; the sight of you fills me with astonishment anddespair. What to do with you I know not; long have I beenmeditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millionsof you, as I count: so many of you fallen sheer over into theabysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unitthat falls is _loading_ so much more the chain that drags theothers over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncountedmillions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day. Theyhang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselvesdown, holding on with all their strength; but falling, fallingone after another; and the chain is getting _heavy_, so that evermore fall; and who at last will stand? What to do with you? Thequestion, What to do with you? especially since the potato died,is like to break my heart!

"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered, andnow know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roamabroad in this unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices,and loading ever heavier the fatal _chain_ upon those who mightbe able to stand; that this of locking you up in temporary IdleWorkhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal,till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and freshstumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil;--that this is_not_ the plan; and that it never was, or could out of Englandhave been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

"Vagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, all this that has beensung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement,emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty overthe world, is little other than sad temporary jargon, broughtupon us by a stern necessity,--but now ordered by a sterner totake itself away again a little. Sad temporary jargon, I say: made up of sense and nonsense,--sense in small quantities, andnonsense in very large;--and, if taken for the whole or permanenttruth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinitenonsense eternally _untrue_. All men, I think, will soon have toquit this, to consider this as a thing pretty well achieved; andto look out towards another thing much more needing achievementat the time that now is.

"All men will have to quit it, I believe. But to you, myindigent friends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived! To talk of glorious self-government, of suffrages and hustings,and the fight of freedom and such like, is a vain thing in yourcase. By all human definitions and conceptions of the said fightof freedom, you for your part have lost it, and can fight nomore. Glorious self-government is a glory not for you, not forHodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No; I say, No. You, foryour part, have tried it, and _failed_. Left to walk your ownroad, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, your short sight could notdescry the pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press has whirled youhither and thither, regardless of your struggles and yourshrieks; and here at last you lie; fallen flat into the ditch,drowning there and dying, unless the others that are stillstanding please to pick you up. The others that still stand havetheir own difficulties, I can tell you!--But you, by imperfectenergy and redundant appetite, by doing too little work anddrinking too much beer, you (I bid you observe) have proved thatyou cannot do it! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And I amto pick you up again, on these mad terms; help you ever again, aswith our best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the godshave made impossible? To load the fatal _chain_ with yourperpetual staggerings and sprawlings; and ever again load it,till we all lie sprawling? My indigent incompetent friends, Iwill not! Know that, whoever may be 'sons of freedom,' you foryour part are not and cannot be such. Not 'free' you, I think,whoever may be free. You palpably are fallencaptive,--_caitiff_, as they once named it:--you do, silently buteloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that somegenuine command be taken of you.

"Yes, my indigent incompetent friends; some genuine practicalcommand. Such,--if I rightly interpret those mad Chartisms,Repeal Agitations, Red Republics, and other deliriousinarticulate howlings and bellowings which all the populations ofthe world now utter, evidently cries of pain on their and yourpart,--is the demand which you, Captives, make of all men thatare not Captive, but are still Free. Free men,--alas, had youever any notion who the free men were, who the not-free, theincapable of freedom! The free men, if you could have understoodit, they are the wise men; the patient, self-denying, valiant;the Nobles of the World; who can discern the Law of thisUniverse, what it is, and piously _obey_ it; these, in late sadtimes, having cast you loose, you are fallen captive to greedysons of profit-and-loss; to bad and ever to worse; and at lengthto Beer and the Devil. Algiers, Brazil or Dahomey hold nothingin them so authentically _slave_ as you are, my indigentincompetent friends!

"Good Heavens, and I have to raise some eight or nine millionsannually, six for England itself, and to wreck the morals of myworking population beyond all money's worth, to keep the lifefrom going out of you: a small service to you, as I many timesbitterly repeat! Alas, yes; before high Heaven I must declare itsuch. I think the old Spartans, who would have killed youinstead, had shown more 'humanity,' more of manhood, than I thusdo! More humanity, I say, more of manhood, and of sense for whatthe dignity of man demands imperatively of you and of me and ofus all. We call it charity, beneficence, and other fine names,this brutish Workhouse Scheme of ours; and it is but sluggishheartlessness, and insincerity, and cowardly lowness of soul. Not 'humanity' or manhood, I think; perhaps _ape_hoodrather,--paltry imitancy, from the teeth outward, of what ourheart never felt nor our understanding ever saw; dim indolentadherence to extraneous and extinct traditions; traditions nowreally about extinct; not living now to almost any of us, andstill haunting with their spectralities and gibbering _ghosts_(in a truly baleful manner) almost all of us! Making this ourstruggling 'Twelfth Hour of the Night' inexpressiblyhideous!-

"But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have torepeat with sorrow, but with perfect clearness, what is plainlyundeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself admitted, thatyou are of the nature of slaves,--or if you prefer the word, of_nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond, servants that canfind no master on those terms_; which seems to me a much uglierword. Emancipation? You have been 'emancipated' with avengeance! Foolish souls, I say the whole world cannot emancipateyou. Fealty to ignorant Unruliness, to gluttonous sluggishImprovidence, to the Beer-pot and the Devil, who is there thatcan emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole ReformBill, a whole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone: nothing but God the Maker can emancipate him, by making himanew.

"To forward which glorious consummation, will it not be well, Oindigent friends, that you, fallen flat there, shall henceforthlearn to take advice of others as to the methods of standing? Plainly I let you know, and all the world and the worlds know,that I for my part mean it so. Not as glorious unfortunate sonsof freedom, but as recognized captives, as unfortunate fallenbrothers requiring that I should command you, and if need were,control and compel you, can there henceforth be a relationbetween us. Ask me not for Indian meal; you shall be compelledto earn it first; know that on other terms I will not give youany. Before Heaven and Earth, and God the Maker of us all, Ideclare it is a scandal to see _such_ a life kept in you, by thesweat and heart's-blood of your brothers; and that, if we cannotmend it, death were preferable! Go to, we must get out ofthis--unutterable coil of nonsenses, constitutional,philanthropical, &c., in which (surely without mutual hatred, ifwith less of 'love' than is supposed) we are all strangling oneanother! Your want of wants, I say, is that you be _commanded_in this world, not being able to command yourselves. Knowtherefore that it shall be so with you. Nomadism, I give younotice, has ended; needful permanency, soldier-like obedience,and the opportunity and the necessity of hard steady labor foryour living, have begun. Know that the Idle Workhouse is shutagainst you henceforth; you cannot enter there at will, nor leaveat will; you shall enter a quite other Refuge, under conditionsstrict as soldiering, and not leave till I have done with you. He that prefers the glorious (or perhaps even the rebellious_in_glorious) 'career of freedom,' let him prove that he cantravel there, and be the master of himself; and right good speedto him. He who has proved that he cannot travel there or be themaster of himself,--let him, in the name of all the gods, becomea servant, and accept the just rules of servitude!

"Arise, enlist in my Irish, my Scotch and English 'Regiments ofthe New Era,'--which I have been concocting, day and night,during these three Grouse-seasons (taking earnest incessantcounsel, with all manner of Industrial Notabilities and men ofinsight, on the matter), and have now brought to a kind ofpreparation for incipiency, thank Heaven! Enlist there, ye poorwandering banditti; obey, work, suffer, abstain, as all of ushave had to do: so shall you be useful in God's creation, soshall you be helped to gain a manful living for yourselves; nototherwise than so. Industrial Regiments [_Here numerous persons,with big wigs many of them, and austere aspect, whom I take to beProfessors of the Dismal Science, start up in an agitatedvehement manner: but the Premier resolutely beckons them downagain_]--Regiments not to fight the French or others, who arepeaceable enough towards us; but to fight the Bogs andWildernesses at home and abroad, and to chain the Devils of thePit which are walking too openly among us.

"Work, for you? Work, surely, is not quite undiscoverable in anEarth so wide as ours, if we will take the right methods for it! Indigent friends, we will adopt this new relation (which is _old_as the world); this will lead us towards such. Rigorousconditions, not to be violated on either side, lie in thisrelation; conditions planted there by God Himself; which woe willbetide us if we do not discover, gradually more and morediscover, and conform to! Industrial Colonels, Workmasters,Task-masters, Life-commanders, equitable as Rhadamanthus andinflexible as he: such, I perceive, you do need; and such, youbeing once put under law as soldiers are, will be discoverablefor you. I perceive, with boundless alarm, that I shall have toset about discovering such,--I, since I am at the top of affairs,with all men looking to me. Alas, it is my new task in this NewEra; and God knows, I too, little other than a red-tapeTalking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquencehitherto, am far behind with it! But street-barricades riseeverywhere: the hour of Fate has come. In Connemara there hassprung a leak, since the potato died; Connaught, if it were notfor Treasury-grants and rates-in-aid, would have to recur toCannibalism even now, and Human Society would cease to pretendthat it existed there. Done this thing must be. Alas, Iperceive that if I cannot do it, then surely I shall die, andperhaps shall not have Christian burial! But I already raisenear upon Ten Millions for feeding you in idleness, my nomadicfriends; work, under due regulations, I really might try to getof--[_Here arises indescribable uproar, no longer repressible,from all manner of Economists, Emancipationists,Constitutionalists, and miscellaneous Professors of the DismalScience, pretty numerously scattered about; and cries of "Privateenterprise," "Rights of Capital," "Voluntary Principle,""Doctrines of the British Constitution," swollen by the generalassenting hum of all the world, quite drown the Chief Ministerfor a while. He, with invincible resolution, persists; obtainshearing again_:]

"Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science, soft you a little. Alas, I know what you would say. For my sins, I have read muchin those inimitable volumes of yours,--really I should think,some barrowfuls of them in my time,--and, in these last fortyyears of theory and practice, have pretty well seized what ofDivine Message you were sent with to me. Perhaps as small amessage, give me leave to say, as ever there was such a noisemade about before. Trust me, I have not forgotten it, shallnever forget it. Those Laws of the Shop-till are indisputable tome; and practically useful in certain departments of theUniverse, as the multiplication-table itself. Once I even triedto sail through the Immensities with them, and to front the bigcoming Eternities with them; but I found it would not do. As theSupreme Rule of Statesmanship, or Government of Men,--since thisUniverse is not wholly a Shop,--no. You rejoice in my improvedtariffs, free-trade movements and the like, on every hand; forwhich be thankful, and even sing litanies if you choose. Buthere at last, in the Idle-Workhouse movement,--unexampled yet onEarth or in the waters under the Earth,--I am fairly brought to astand; and have had to make reflections, of the most alarming,and indeed awful, and as it were religious nature! Professors ofthe Dismal Science, I perceive that the length of your tether isnow pretty well run; and that I must request you to talk a littlelower in future. By the side of the shop-till,--see, your small'Law of God' is hung up, along with the multiplication-tableitself. But beyond and above the shop-till, allow me to say, youshall as good as hold your peace. Respectable Professors, Iperceive it is not now the Gigantic Hucksters, but it is theImmortal Gods, yes they, in their terror and their beauty, intheir wrath and their beneficence, that are coming into play inthe affairs of this world! Soft you a little. Do not youinterrupt me, but try to understand and help me!--

--"Work, was I saying? My indigent unguided friends, I shouldthink some work might be discoverable for you. Enlist, standdrill; become, from a nomadic Banditti of Idleness, Soldiers ofIndustry! I will lead you to the Irish Bogs, to the vacantdesolations of Connaught now falling into Cannibalism, tomistilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I willlead you: to the English fox-covers, furze-grown Commons, NewForests, Salisbury Plains: likewise to the Scotch Hill-sides,and bare rushy slopes, which as yet feed only sheep,--moistuplands, thousands of square miles in extent, which are destinedyet to grow green crops, and fresh butter and milk and beefwithout limit (wherein no 'Foreigner can compete with us'), werethe Glasgow sewers once opened on them, and you with yourColonels carried thither. In the Three Kingdoms, or in the FortyColonies, depend upon it, you shall be led to your work!

"To each of you I will then say: Here is work for you; strikeinto it with manlike, soldier-like obedience and heartiness,according to the methods here prescribed,--wages follow for youwithout difficulty; all manner of just remuneration, and atlength emancipation itself follows. Refuse to strike into it;shirk the heavy labor, disobey the rules,--I will admonish andendeavor to incite you; if in vain, I will flog you; if still invain, I will at last shoot you,--and make God's Earth, and theforlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you. Understand it, Iadvise you! The Organization of Labor"--[_Left speaking_, saysour reporter.]

"Left speaking:" alas, that he should have to "speak" so much! There are things that should be done, not spoken; that till thedoing of them is begun, cannot well be spoken. He may have to"speak" seven years yet, before a spade be struck into the Bog ofAllen; and then perhaps it will be too late!-

You perceive, my friends, we have actually got into the "New Era"there has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived atlast;--and it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honeywe were led to expect! Very much the reverse. A terrible _new_country this: no neighbors in it yet, that I can see, butirrational flabby monsters (philanthropic and other) of the giantspecies; hyenas, laughing hyenas, predatory wolves; probably_devils_, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow) devils, as St.Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge untrodden haggardcountry, the "chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;" a countryof savage glaciers, granite mountains, of foul jungles, unhewedforests, quaking bogs;--which we shall have our own ados to makearable and habitable, I think! We must stick by it, however;--ofall enterprises the impossiblest is that of getting out of it,and shifting into another. To work, then, one and all; hands towork!

[March 1, 1850.] No. II. MODEL PRISONS.

The deranged condition of our affairs is a universal topic amongmen at present; and the heavy miseries pressing, in their rudestshape, on the great dumb inarticulate class, and from this, by asure law, spreading upwards, in a less palpable but not lesscertain and perhaps still more fatal shape on all classes to thevery highest, are admitted everywhere to be great, increasing andnow almost unendurable. How to diminish them,--this is everyman's question. For in fact they do imperatively needdiminution; and unless they can be diminished, there are manyother things that cannot very long continue to exist beside them. A serious question indeed, How to diminish them!

Among the articulate classes, as they may be called, there aretwo ways of proceeding in regard to this. One large body of theintelligent and influential, busied mainly in personal affairs,accepts the social iniquities, or whatever you may call them, andthe miseries consequent thereupon; accepts them, admits them tobe extremely miserable, pronounces them entirely inevitable,incurable except by Heaven, and eats its pudding with as littlethought of them as possible. Not a very noble class of citizensthese; not a very hopeful or salutary method of dealing withsocial iniquities this of theirs, however it may answer inrespect to themselves and their personal affairs! But now thereis the select small minority, in whom some sentiment of publicspirit and human pity still survives, among whom, or notanywhere, the Good Cause may expect to find soldiers andservants: their method of proceeding, in these times, is alsovery strange. They embark in the "philanthropic movement;" theycalculate that the miseries of the world can be cured by bringingthe philanthropic movement to bear on them. To universal publicmisery, and universal neglect of the clearest public duties, letprivate charity superadd itself: there will thus be some balancerestored, and maintained again; thus,--or by what conceivablemethod? On these terms they, for their part, embark in thesacred cause; resolute to cure a world's woes by rose-water;desperately bent on trying to the uttermost that mild method. Itseems not to have struck these good men that no world, or thinghere below, ever fell into misery, without having first falleninto folly, into sin against the Supreme Ruler of it, by adoptingas a law of conduct what was not a law, but the reverse of one;and that, till its folly, till its sin be cast out of it, thereis not the smallest hope of its misery going,--that not for allthe charity and rose-water in the world will its misery try to gotill then!

This is a sad error; all the sadder as it is the error chiefly ofthe more humane and noble-minded of our generation; among whom,as we said, or elsewhere not at all, the cause of real Reformmust expect its servants. At present, and for a long while past,whatsoever young soul awoke in EnGland with some dispositiontowards generosity and social heroism, or at lowest with someintimation of the beauty of such a disposition,--he, in whom thepoor world might have looked for a Reformer, and valiant menderof its foul ways, was almost sure to become a Philanthropist,reforming merely by this rose-water method. To admit that theworld's ways are foul, and not the ways of God the Maker, but ofSatan the Destroyer, many of them, and that they must be mendedor we all die; that if huge misery prevails, huge cowardice,falsity, disloyalty, universal Injustice high and low, have stilllonger prevailed, and must straightway try to cease prevailing: this is what no visible reformer has yet thought of doing: Allso-called "reforms" hitherto are grounded either on openlyadmitted egoism (cheap bread to the cotton-spinner, voting tothose that have no vote, and the like), which does not pointtowards very celestial developments of the Reform movement; orelse upon this of remedying social injustices by indiscriminatecontributions of philanthropy, a method surely still moreunpromising. Such contributions, being indiscriminate, are but anew injustice; these will never lead to reform, or abolition ofinjustice, whatever else they lead to!

Not by that method shall we "get round Cape Horn," by never suchunanimity of voting, under the most approved Phantasm Captains! It is miserable to see. Having, as it were, quite lost our wayround Cape Horn, and being sorely "admonished" by the Iceberg andother dumb councillors, the pilots,--instead of taking to theirsextants, and asking with a seriousness unknown for a long while,What the Laws of wind and water, and of Earth and of Heavenare,--decide that now, in these new circumstances, they will, tothe worthy and unworthy, serve out a double allowance of grog. In this way they hope to do it,--by steering on the old wrongtack, and serving out more and more, copiously what little _aquavitae_ may be still on board! Philanthropy, emancipation, andpity for human calamity is very beautiful; but the deep oblivionof the Law of Right and Wrong; this "indiscriminate mashing up ofRight and Wrong into a patent treacle" of the Philanthropicmovement, is by no means beautiful; this, on the contrary, isaltogether ugly and alarming.

Truly if there be not something inarticulate among us, not yetuttered but pressing towards utterance, which is much wiser thananything we have lately articulated or brought into word oraction, our outlooks are rather lamentable. The great majorityof the powerful and active-minded, sunk in egoistic scepticisms,busied in chase of lucre, pleasure, and mere vulgar objects,looking with indifference on the world's woes, and passingcarelessly by on the other side; and the select minority, of whombetter might have been expected, bending all their strength tocure them by methods which can only make bad worse, and in theend render cure hopeless. A blind loquacious pruriency ofindiscriminate Philanthropism substituting itself, with muchself-laudation, for the silent divinely awful sense of Right andWrong;--testifying too clearly that here is no longer a divinesense of Right and Wrong; that, in the smoke of this universal,and alas inevitable and indispensable revolutionary fire, andburning up of worn-out rags of which the world is full, ourlife-atmosphere has (for the time) become one vile London fog,and the eternal loadstars are gone out for us! Gone out;--yetvery visible if you can get above the fog; still there in theirplace, and quite the same as they always were! To whoever doesstill know of loadstars, the proceedings, which expand themselvesdaily, of these sublime philanthropic associations, and"universal sluggard-and-scoundrel protection-societies," are aperpetual affliction. With their emancipations and abolitionprinciples, and reigns of brotherhood and new methods of love,they have done great things in the White and in the Black World,during late years; and are preparing for greater.

In the interest of human reform, if there is ever to be anyreform, and return to prosperity or to the possibility ofprospering, it is urgent that the nonsense of all this (and it ismostly nonsense, but not quite) should be sent about its businessstraightway, and forbidden to deceive the well-meaning soulsamong us any more. Reform, if we will understand that divineword, cannot begin till then. One day, I do know, this, as isthe doom of all nonsense, will be drummed out of the world, withdue placard stuck on its back, and the populace flinging deadcats at it: but whether soon or not, is by no means so certain. I rather guess, _not_ at present, not quite soon. Fraternity, inother countries, has gone on, till it found itself unexpectedlymanipulating guillotines by its chosen Robespierres, and become afraternity like Cain's. Much to its amazement! For in fact itis not all nonsense; there is an infinitesimal fraction of sensein it withal; which is so difficult to disengage;--which must bedisengaged, and laid hold of, before Fraternity can vanish.

But to our subject,--the Model Prison, and the strange theory oflife now in action there. That, for the present, is my share inthe wide adventure of Philanthropism; the world's share, and howand when it is to be liquidated and ended, rests with the SupremeDestinies.

Several months ago, some friends took me with them to see one ofthe London Prisons; a Prison of the exemplary or model kind. Animmense circuit of buildings; cut out, girt with a highring-wall, from the lanes and streets of the quarter, which is adim and crowded one. Gateway as to a fortified place; then aspacious court, like the square of a city; broad staircases,passages to interior courts; fronts of stately architecture allround. It lodges some thousand or twelve hundred prisoners,besides the officers of the establishment. Surely one of themost perfect buildings, within the compass of London. We lookedat the apartments, sleeping-cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms,general courts or special and private: excellent all, thene-plus-ultra of human care and ingenuity; in my life I never sawso clean a building; probably no Duke in England lives in amansion of such perfect and thorough cleanness.

The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food,in their respective cooking-places, we tasted: found them ofexcellence superlative. The prisoners sat at work, light work,picking oakum, and the like, in airy apartments with glass roofs,of agreeable temperature and perfect ventilation; silent, or atleast conversing only by secret signs: others were out, takingtheir hour of promenade in clean flagged courts: methodiccomposure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesome comfortreigned everywhere supreme. The women in other apartments, somenotable murderesses among them, all in the like state of methodiccomposure and substantial wholesome comfort, sat sewing: in longranges of wash-houses, drying-houses and whatever pertains to thegetting-up of clean linen, were certain others, with allconceivable mechanical furtherances, not too arduously working. The notable murderesses were, though with great precautions ofprivacy, pointed out to us; and we were requested not to lookopenly at them, or seem to notice them at all, as it was found to"cherish their vanity" when visitors looked at them. Schools toowere there; intelligent teachers of both sexes, studiouslyinstructing the still ignorant of these thieves.

From an inner upper room or gallery, we looked down into a rangeof private courts, where certain Chartist Notabilities wereundergoing their term. Chartist Notability First struck me verymuch; I had seen him about a year before, by involuntary accidentand much to my disgust, magnetizing a silly young person; and hadnoted well the unlovely voracious look of him, his thick oilyskin, his heavy dull-burning eyes, his greedy mouth, the duskypotent insatiable animalism that looked out of every feature ofhim: a fellow adequate to animal-magnetize most things, I didsuppose;--and here was the post I now found him arrived at. Nextneighbor to him was Notability Second, a philosophic or literaryChartist; walking rapidly to and fro in his private court, aclean, high-walled place; the world and its cares quite excluded,for some months to come: master of his own time and spiritualresources to, as I supposed, a really enviable extent. What"literary man" to an equal extent! I fancied I, for my own part,so left with paper and ink, and all taxes and botherations shutout from me, could have written such a Book as no reader willhere ever get of me. Never, O reader, never here in a mere housewith taxes and botherations. Here, alas, one has to snatch one'spoor Book, bit by bit, as from a conflagration; and to think andlive, comparatively, as if the house were not one's own, butmainly the world's and the devil's. Notability Second might havefilled one with envy.

The Captain of the place, a gentleman of ancient Military orRoyal-Navy habits, was one of the most perfect governors;professionally and by nature zealous for cleanliness,punctuality, good order of every kind; a humane heart and yet astrong one; soft of speech and manner, yet with an inflexiblerigor of command, so far as his limits went: "iron hand in avelvet glove," as Napoleon defined it. A man of real worth,challenging at once love and respect: the light of those mildbright eyes seemed to permeate the place as with anall-pervading vigilance, and kindly yet victorious illumination;in the soft definite voice it was as if Nature herself werepromulgating her orders, gentlest mildest orders, which however,in the end, there would be no disobeying, which in the end therewould be no living without fulfilment of. A true "aristos," andcommander of men. A man worthy to have commanded and guidedforward, in good ways, twelve hundred of the best common-peoplein London or the world: he was here, for many years past, givingall his care and faculty to command, and guide forward in suchways as there were, twelve hundred of the worst. I looked withconsiderable admiration on this gentleman; and with considerableastonishment, the reverse of admiration, on the work he had herebeen set upon.

This excellent Captain was too old a Commander to complain ofanything; indeed he struggled visibly the other way, to find inhis own mind that all here was best; but I could sufficientlydiscern that, in his natural instincts, if not mounting up to theregion of his thoughts, there was a continual protest going onagainst much of it; that nature and all his inarticulatepersuasion (however much forbidden to articulate itself) taughthim the futility and unfeasibility of the system followed here. The Visiting Magistrates, he gently regretted rather thancomplained, had lately taken his tread-wheel from him, men werejust now pulling it down; and how he was henceforth to enforcediscipline on these bad subjects, was much a difficulty with him. "They cared for nothing but the tread-wheel, and for having theirrations cut short:" of the two sole penalties, hard work andoccasional hunger, there remained now only one, and that by nomeans the better one, as he thought. The "sympathy" of visitors,too, their "pity" for his interesting scoundrel-subjects, thoughhe tried to like it, was evidently no joy to this practical mind. Pity, yes: but pity for the scoundrel-species? For those whowill not have pity on themselves, and will force the Universe andthe Laws of Nature to have no "pity on" them? Meseems I coulddiscover fitter objects of pity!

In fact it was too clear, this excellent man had got a field forhis faculties which, in several respects, was by no means thesuitable one. To drill twelve hundred scoundrels by "the methodof kindness," and of abolishing your very tread-wheel,--how couldany commander rejoice to have such a work cut out for him? Youhad but to look in the faces of these twelve hundred, anddespair, for most part, of ever "commanding" them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality; ape-faces,imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces; degradedunderfoot perverse creatures, sons of _in_docility, greedymutinous darkness, and in one word, of STUPIDITY, which is thegeneral mother of such. Stupidity intellectual and stupiditymoral (for the one always means the other, as you will, withsurprise or not, discover if you look) had borne this progeny:base-natured beings, on whom in the course of a maleficentsubterranean life of London Scoundrelism, the Genius of Darkness(called Satan, Devil, and other names) had now visibly impressedhis seal, and had marked them out as soldiers of Chaos and ofhim,--appointed to serve in _his_ Regiments, First of the line,Second ditto, and so on in their order. Him, you could perceive,they would serve; but not easily another than him. These were thesubjects whom our brave Captain and Prison-Governor wasappointed to command, and reclaim to _other_ service, by "themethod of love," with a tread-wheel abolished.

Hopeless forevermore such a project. These abject, ape, wolf,ox, imp and other diabolic-animal specimens of humanity, who ofthe very gods could ever have commanded them by love? A collarround the neck, and a cart-whip flourished over the back; these,in a just and steady human hand, were what the gods would haveappointed them; and now when, by long misconduct and neglect,they had sworn themselves into the Devil's regiments of the line,and got the seal of Chaos impressed on their visage, it was verydoubtful whether even these would be of avail for the unfortunatecommander of twelve hundred men! By "love," without hope exceptof peaceably teasing oakum, or fear except of a temporary loss ofdinner, he was to guide these men, and wisely constrainthem,--whitherward? No-whither: that was his goal, if you willthink well of it; that was a second fundamental falsity in hisproblem. False in the warp and false in the woof, thought one ofus; about as false a problem as any I have seen a good man setupon lately! To guide scoundrels by "love;" that is a false woof,I take it, a method that will not hold together; hardly for theflower of men will love alone do; and for the sediment andscoundrelism of men it has not even a chance to do. And then toguide any class of men, scoundrel or other, _No-whither_, whichwas this poor Captain's problem, in this Prison with oakum forits one element of hope or outlook, how can that prosper by"love" or by any conceivable method? That is a warp whollyfalse. Out of which false warp, or originally false condition tostart from, combined and daily woven into by your false woof, ormethods of "love" and such like, there arises for our poorCaptain the falsest of problems, and for a man of his faculty theunfairest of situations. His problem was, not to command goodmen to do something, but bad men to do (with superficialdisguises) nothing.

On the whole, what a beautiful Establishment here fitted up forthe accommodation of the scoundrel-world, male and female! As Isaid, no Duke in England is, for all rational purposes which ahuman being can or ought to aim at, lodged, fed, tended, takencare of, with such perfection. Of poor craftsmen that pay ratesand taxes from their day's wages, of the dim millions that toiland moil continually under the sun, we know what is the lodgingand the tending. Of the Johnsons, Goldsmiths, lodged in theirsqualid garrets; working often enough amid famine, darkness,tumult, dust and desolation, what work _they_ have to do:--ofthese as of "spiritual backwoodsmen," understood to bepreappointed to such a life, and like the pigs to killing, "quiteused to it," I say nothing. But of Dukes, which Duke, I couldask, has cocoa, soup, meat, and food in general made ready, sofit for keeping him in health, in ability to do and to enjoy? Which Duke has a house so thoroughly clean, pure and airy; livesin an element so wholesome, and perfectly adapted to the uses ofsoul and body as this same, which is provided here for theDevil's regiments of the line? No Duke that I have ever known. Dukes are waited on by deleterious French cooks, by perfunctory